Kiyloni, 18 – Parenting At A Young Age

“I’m the oldest of six kids and the oldest of 16 grandkids. So, that whole part of like my life kind of have defined my life for the rest of my life. Because I’m the oldest, I’ve kind of took on that role on being like the responsible, like a surrogate parent to all of the kids.”

“My mom hasn’t always been like the greatest parent, so she hasn’t really been like a very paternal presence in our lives and so my grandparents were the ones who raised us.”

“That has kind of like shaped like my whole reason for like doing everything; In terms of like going to school. My whole life goal has been, getting to college in order to get a career and to like become stable so that I can go back and help my family. That has always been like my main priority and the reason for why I’m doing everything.”

I asked Kiyloni what the hardest part was while raising children while being a child herself.

“The hardest part was always like trying to deal with like the emotional burden of that. So like when you like seven years old and you’re helping raise your siblings, it’s very frustrating thing to do cause you’re like first of, ‘I’m a kid why do I have to do this’ and so because of that I had like a lot of animosity and like anger and hate toward my mom for a very long time.”

“ …that’s like the root of all my emotional problems.”

“When we were younger she would always like go out to like parties and stuff instead. So I felt like she was trying to reclaim her youth because she did have me so young.”

“I think that the happiest moments in my life are when I’m actually with like my siblings, just chilling with them and just laughing and stuff, like having a good time with them.”

“In those moments when I’m with my family and it’s not like any anger or irritation happening, I like being in those moments because it reminds me that our family, even though how broken and messed up we are, we still like have some love for each other.”

“… and then being in college now is also one of probably like where I’ve been like extremely happy just because I’m adulting for the first time.”

“I’ve realized that like all the things I’ve gone through and like all the thing that are like happening to me are all for a reason. All of those things have made me the person I am now.”